There is an incident which occurred in the good ol USA recently, which is very telling of a certain political perspective and value system.

Imagine this. Pastor Fred Phelps (godhatesfags.com) performs a public prayer where he prays that the leader of the Gay Rights movement dies.

Now.. before you view the link below.. please take a moment for an HONEST opinion about such a thing. If someone prays for the death of another who differs politically (or religiously) is this 'hateful prejudice and loathing' ?

Now.. let's imagine a public servant sends an email out declaring that his praying for the death of a high profile political opponent.

What is your honest opinion (specially you lefties) of what should happen to such a public servant)

Now.. have a peek at this and see who did the praying and how it worked out.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/chris-christie-recounts-confrontation-with-teachers-union-prez/

Does anyone see any hypocrisy in this? if so..with whom? and why?

This lefty will give you his honest heart felt answer Boazy.
That preacher should be imprisoned and all his followers.
A public servant who did as you say, I suspect you will name one, should be sacked.
And I want you to focus on these spiteful Christians, look closely at them.
And know I see a little bit off you in them.
Honest not intended to hurt you just your American style branding of my side of politics, if I am wrong in seeing Christianity being used as a weapon by you then forgive me.
And Boazy I remember saying and still believe a Christian will go out of his/her way to help I however never could see you doing that for a lefty.

It's all about context, really.

(By the way, did I mention that I don't watch YouTube, Boaz. I always look for the written word - it's so much... tidier, I find)

Here's Joe Coppola's sin, in full, the final paragraph of a memo to fellow Teachers Union members.

"'Dear Lord … this year you have taken away my favorite actor, Patrick Swayze, my favorite actress, Farrah Fawcett, my favorite singer, Michael Jackson, and my favorite salesman, Billy Mays. … I just wanted to let you know that Chris Christie is my favorite governor.' The memo, sent to locals in the county earlier this week and obtained by The Record on Thursday, is signed by New Jersey Education Association field representatives, including Joe Coppola, president of the Bergen County Education Association. Coppola said the “prayer” was a joke and was never meant to be made public. 'Obviously, it’s inappropriate,” he said. “I would never wish anybody dead.'"

Extremely poor taste, I agree.

>>Now.. let's imagine a public servant sends an email out declaring that his praying for the death of a high profile political opponent. What is your honest opinion (specially you lefties) of what should happen to such a public servant<<

He should be thrashed within an inch of his life, and his broken body left in the desert for the vultures to pick clean.

Or, alternatively, he should be reprimanded, and given some counselling on his thoroughly tacky sense of humour. Let's face it, it had to be humour - the fact that he claimed Farrah Fawcett was his favourite actress was a dead giveaway.

Interesting responses there :)

Glad you managed to track down the actual email Pericles.

But truly...the vid is worth looking at.. it gives some interesting insights to the 'progressive' mind.

Speaking of your hunger for the written word...and esPECially your strange sentence about the birds picking clean. (I can't resist this, so you will just have to endure it ....)

http://www.usc.edu/schools/college/crcc/engagement/resources/texts/muslim/hadith/bukhari/082.sbt.html#008.082.796

I'll at least resist the temptation to cut/paste it in full here. But please read the last bit of that document from 'The Prophet ordered...

Belly old mate.. I'm thinking you missed the point of the post...

PERICLES.. more to you. The reason I raised this thread is much broader than the specific incident mentioned. It goes back to the history of the 'progressive/neo-con' struggle and I have a question for you..(I'll probably do a new discussion about this anyway but I'm interested in your answer early)

"WHAT" is... a...'NEO'-CON ?

How did they start and when?

When you know the background, you will probably tweak to how this current discussion fits in.

If you have access for Fox news, they have an interesting mini series/doco on the matter running.

What makes it so, Boaz?

>>But truly...the vid is worth looking at<<

Not going to happen. Anyhow, your opinion of what makes it interesting might not be at all like mine. But if you found me a transcript, that could be of interest to me.

And thank you for the carefully chosen extract from an Islamic text. Whose content was equally carefully chosen, I notice...

"It is said that al-Bukhari collected over 300,000 hadith and included only 2,602 traditions in his Sahih."

There's nothing you like better to make your point, is there Boaz, than a single carefully selected quote, taken from a small selection of carefully selected quotes, from another slightly larger selection of carefully chosen quotes, which themselves constitute less than 1% of a possible 300,000.

Colour me unconvinced.

>>I have a question for you... "WHAT" is... a...'NEO'-CON ?<<

It is not a term that I personally use, Boaz, on account of the fact that I have heard it employed in so many different ways, to pick just one might give the false impression that I know what I'm talking about, neo-con-wise.

But I did look it up for you, and here's what I found.

http://www.neocon.com/

But that's not what you are after. Here's another, slightly more convincing. Just the overview, naturally.

"A neo-conservative (abbreviated as neo-con or neocon) is part of a U.S. based political movement rooted in liberal Cold War anticommunism and a backlash to the social liberation movements of the 1960s and 1970s. These liberals drifted toward conservatism: thus they are new (neo) conservatives. They favor an aggressive unilateral U.S. foreign policy. They generally believe that elites protect democracy from mob rule."

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Neo-conservative

What this doesn't tell me, is whether they think that "elites protect[ing] democracy from mob rule" is a good thing, or a bad thing.

But I'm sure you will enlighten me at the appropriate time.

I'm curious Boazy, this issue would, more than anything, show a clear splinter between two groups branded as "conservative" than a left/right divide;
On one hand, you have Phelps and his religious fundamentalists who even despise American soldiers due to them being servants of a government to which they hate solely because they don't PENALIZE gays- beyond this motive, their campaign is something one would normally accuse "the left" of doing.
On the other hand, the patriots of the USA (dubbed conservative) would be staunchly against such a force that pickets soldier's funerals and declare themselves enemies of the country- yet they would also effectively be standing up for gay people, something else would normally be accused of "the left".
-What's your take on this?
It would be, in essence, a clash between political conservatives and fundamentalist Christians.

To your question, I would be uncertain, as this is probably still well into a necessity of free speech (as much as I'd love to see Phelps thrown in jail, along with a good many sharia preachers who would likely make a similar statement)